Sunday, 27 May 2012

Just a book review

So, the sun is shining and I've been sitting in the garden. And thinking
that I should write a blog about why Independence is such a misplaced objective
for the Left with reference to the experience of the successors of James
Connolly.

But, then again the sun was shining.

And when you’re sitting in the garden, perhaps with a glass
of wine, to be honest, politics can wait. Nothing better than a good book.

When I was a very young man, and still at University, I was
given a lift back from a Labour Party meeting by a guy called Mike Pepper. He
seemed to me to be very wise, for he was one of the few local party members who
could properly be described as an intellectual. He had a postgraduate degree
and had worked as a senior civil servant in the then equivalent of the
Department of Overseas Development. He also seemed to be very old, although I
suspect he was more or less the age I am today.

“What” he inquired “are you currently reading?”

Now, I am sure I at first tried to impress him with reference
to something by Gramsci, Luxembourg or
Marcuse (in the latter case, never a more wasted hour). He however pressed on. “No.
What fiction are you reading?”

I confessed that I didn’t have much time for fiction,
particularly in the midst of also having to read the occasional Law book at the
time. I would, I confidently asserted, have time for fiction in later life.

“No you won’t.”

And there was never a truer word spoken.

The reality of my life is that I seldom have time to read
fiction nowadays. Except on holiday.

But, when the sun shines in Scotland, an admittedly rare occurrence,
you can have a mini-holiday. So, over the last two days, in my own garden, I
have digested Andy Nicoll’s book “If you’re reading this I’m already dead.”

Now, it is very rare for me to have met somebody who has
written a book. By a book, I mean a work of fiction. I know lots of people who
have written non-fiction books. Anybody can do that. Well maybe not anybody,
but anybody with a commission, time and, not unimportantly, a reasonable command
of the language. Whether the result is then readable then kind of depends on
whether you are interested in the subject in the first place. I was once,
thanks to a luggage disaster, marooned in the Alto Adige with nothing to read
but a biography of Albert Camus and, I have to admit, I struggled. Despite the
Goalkeeper’s fear of the Penalty, there wasn’t even much about football in it.

But a work of fiction is something else entirely.

And a book written by someone after you have met them
is something else again. Before is altogether easier. Christopher Brookmyre is
among the elect of the Black and White Army, and, in that capacity, a pal of my
brother. So, when I first met him I could happily have ignored his celebrity
and stuck to more important matters, such as whether Hugh Murray could play
another season at the top level. (Answer: when we first met, certainly; Today,
regrettably not)

You could in the process avoid any awkward questions about
his oeuvre by pretending to be unaware of it, or, at least, by implying from it
lying undiscussed, that it was not really to your taste. Not that, I should
hurry to add, that this was required in Chris’s (spot the name drop there) case; indeed the problem was more rather that
he clearly did not feel the North Bank at Love Street was an appropriate
location for a “We’re not worthy” demonstration on my part; such obeisances
being reserved, at that place and time, for the great Hugh Murray himself.

But it’s altogether more complicated when somebody you
already know declares that they have written a book.

So, when I learned that Andy Nicoll had written a book, I
was a bit apprehensive. Because, before he ever wrote any kind of book, I knew
Andy Nicoll. He was an acquaintance, perhaps a bit more, as he was a great pal of
my best pal, John Boothman. And he was, and here I am descriptive rather than
judgemental, a hack. A senior hack but a journalist nonetheless. While he could
smell out a story and write it up as well as any; and occasionally contribute a
witty comment piece, he was essentially a fact based writer. And he worked,
indeed still does, for the Sun.

So, given his employer, the fear was that, as fiction, he
might produce some sort of sub-Freddy Forsyth thriller. Full of square jawed former
SAS men determined to right the wrongs left un-righted by the fall of Mrs
Thatcher.

In fact, his first book “The Good Mayor” could not have been
further from that than anyone might reasonably imagine. Indeed, as a secret fan
of derring-do, it wasn’t really my thing. It would best be described as a bit
surrealist (“a bit” anything being as far as Scottish people ever go). Towards
the end the central female character turns into...............I had better say
no more in case you some day read it.

I did however, as you will have gathered, read it in anticipation
of encountering the author. Only I didn’t; since this was that brief period of
my life when I abandoned the company of low-life political hacks to temporarily
masquerade as a member of the legal establishment.

And, shamefully, he then wrote another book which I have not
yet read at all.

But. It is always darkest before the dawn.

I met the self same author at the last Labour Party
Conference in Dundee. Not the greatest event I’ve ever attended; indeed,
learning that Andy had written another book was the single thing I did learn. I
was even invited to its launch event, at which I was promised “free drink”. I
couldn’t manage that, even for the free drink, but I did buy the book.

And, as I imply, after a few false starts when after a long
working day a single chapter was struggled to completed before I was overtaken
by Morpheus, over the last two days I have read “the book”.

It’s brilliant. When my dad died I inherited a large number
of novels given to him as school and boy scout prizes before the War. Memory
serves that they were all written by W.G. Henty, although I suspect others were
involved. Adventure stories nonetheless. Written in that period Hobsbawn would
refer to as the final part of the long 19th Century.

Now, I know, had I been alive in that period I would have
spent my time railing against the iniquities of the age in Methodist Halls and
Miners’ Welfare Institutes. But it was also, at least in fiction, an era of
great adventure. Of perils on the high seas; in “darkest” Africa and, above
all, in the Levant, where, almost credibly, the direst of circumstance could be
saved by the sudden arrival of the Royal Navy.

Andy has written an adventure story in that tradition, and
brilliantly. But he has also coupled it with a rather cynical contemporary and retrospective
commentary in the style of (and I mean no false praise) Umberto Eco. As you
travel from Budapest to Fiume and then onwards to Albania you turn every page
keen to know what happens next but, increasingly, find yourself in apprehension
that the reducing number of pages means that the adventure must be drawing to a
close.

And when it is all over? You are left reflecting not just on
the dangers but also the attractions of the “Great Man” school of history.

Buy this book. Although he doesn’t know it yet, the author
has promised me a pint for every additional 100 copies sold. If he turns out to
be the new JK Rowling I might never need to buy a drink for myself ever again.
This year at least.